Print 2 borderless A5 pages on an A4 page

[bertils50751386]

So I'm stuck on an issue here that I can't find an answer to anywhere so would be very appreciative if anyone here can help me out.

I have a 2 page spread A5 document that has details going all the way out to the edges and therefore must be printed borderless. I'm trying to put this design on an A4 page that can be cut in the middle. Any way I try to do this creates a 1 mm gap in the middle of the A4 page, in between the two A5 pages, which is very visible when printing. Don't understand why this is the case or how to get around it except for dragging the designs out to cover up the gap once the pages are pasted on top of an A4 document. However, this takes a lot of time considering that I need to do this for many slightly different designs. Any ideas on how to get around this in an easy way?

I'm using InDesign CC on Mac.

[Derek Cross]

It depends on your printer. Most A4 desktop printers don't print to the edge as they need a margin for the grip. Double check your printer's spec in the manual.

[bertils50751386]

My printer is not the problem and neither is printing out to the margins of an A4 paper, it's something I've done plenty of times. The problem is the 1 mm gap between the A5 pages in the middle of the paper. Here's a print screen from Photoshop, but it's the exact same issue in InDesign.

[Derek Cross]

Are you printing from a PDF?

[bertils50751386]

The documents are saved as PDFs so I'm trying to do that. But I have also tried to print it direct from inDesign (however, can't find an option for getting 2 pages on one a4 paper there) and from Photoshop.

[bertils50751386 · Accepted solution]

I've realised that A5 is actually a bit smaller than half an A4 page as the width is rounded down from 148.5 mm (=half of an A4) to 148 mm. This would explain why I get a gap in between the pages and I suppose there is nothing to do about it other than manually increasing the document width by 0.5 mm when I create the file. Weird that I can't find any info about this online though...

[Derek Cross]

I suppose so.

[Danny Whitehead.]

Annoyingly, we still haven't settled on industry standard dimensions for A5. When I design for A5, it's always 148.5 x 210 (and A7 is 74.25 x 105). That's after doing countless A5 saddle-stitched booklets that were printed on dead A3. But in the majority of A5 work that comes here to be printed from client-supplied artwork, it's 148.

[Laubender]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Danny+Whitehead.  wrote

… But in the majority of A5 work that comes here to be printed from client-supplied artwork, it's 148.

And for a reason. An InDesign document preset defines A5 as 148 x 210 mm.

Regards,
Uwe